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But Bitcoin hasn’t succeeded. It doesn’t allow you to do anything useful except (1) buy drugs on the internet, and (2) move money out of authoritarian countries
by School-Cotton 5y ago
But Bitcoin hasn’t succeeded. It doesn’t allow you to do anything useful except (1) buy drugs on the internet, and (2) move money out of authoritarian countries, both of which he acknowledges in the article.
The fact that a lot of people care about blockchains and are willing to make speculative bets on them doesn’t mean that the idea is actually useful for much.
The FAANGs at least have made some real products, some of which some people find useful.
- mitchdoogle 5y agoYou can buy tons of stuff with Bitcoin (not just drugs). You can transfer it around the world basically for free (transaction fees amount to the equivalent of pennies no matter how much you send). It's immutable. Basically it does the things it's supposed to do. It's gained widespread adoption, a whole economy, thousands of businesses. It is, without a doubt, successful.
- School-Cotton 5y ago> You can buy tons of stuff with Bitcoin You can also buy tons of stuff with USD. The only innovation of Bitcoin is that it allows you to do illegal stuff. A more expensive and cumbersome way to do what you could already do with other tools is not “success”. > You can transfer it around the world basically for free (transaction fees amount to the equivalent of pennies no matter how much you send). This is also true of, for example, TransferWise. > It’s immutable This actually makes it worse than the existing financial system, because being able to reverse fraudulent transactions is a feature, not a bug. > It’s gained widespread adoption, a while economy, thousands of businesses. Also true of USD. You still haven’t demonstrated any advantage of Bitcoin other than illegal transactions.
- Osiris 5y agoMuch more illegal activity happens with USD than with Bitcoin.
- yownie 5y ago>This is also true of, for example, TransferWise. Not for small to large amounts for less than pennies >A more expensive and cumbersome way to do what you could already do with other tools is not “success”. You're vastly underestimating the amount of people trapped in regimes where they cannot spend their funds abroad or risk having them devalued at whim.
- wonnage 5y agoBitcoin is the definition of getting devalued at whim
- crummy 5y ago> or risk having them devalued at whim. doesn't that describe a lot of cryptocurrencies? or are you suggesting the people in these regimes use cryptocurrencies as an intermediary to transfer their local currency into more stable foreign currency?
- errantmind 5y agoThis reasoning is really strange and reeks of bitterness. Do you have anything backing up your claim BTC is used for mostly illegal activities? Please provide some very clear citations for that claim.
- School-Cotton 5y agoI never claimed that, and have no idea whether it’s true.
- jjeaff 5y agoThere are very few things you can buy more easily using Bitcoin. And average fees to send money right now with Bitcoin are 2-3%. Which is not great, considering the current financial system offers lots of much cheaper options for sending money.
- yownie 5y agotake a look at Bitcoins Lightning network sometime, you'd be surprised.
- akavi 5y ago> It's gained widespread adoption, a whole economy, thousands of businesses. What percent of those business denominate their prices in bitcoin? What percent of those businesses do anything but immediately convert the bitcoin back into fiat the moment they take possession?
- anm89 5y agoBut Google hasn't succeeded! It was supposed to do something useful but all it does is mine data for ads. They were supposed to not be evil but they are evil. But Facebook hasn't succeeded. It was supposed to do something useful but all it does is mine data for ads. They were supposed to connect everyone but all they did was corrupt our political system. But Apple hasn't succeeded. It was supposed to do something useful but all it does is pump out a new Iphone color every year and remove a port. They were supposed to revolutionize computing but all the did was figure out how to sell shiny junk made by poor people in developing markets to middle class people in developing markets. See how easy it is to play that game? Somehow I'm guessing most people who like bitcoin in 2011 aren't reeling from the failure of bitcoin.
- School-Cotton 5y agoYour analogies miss the mark because in addition to the negative things you’ve pointed out, Google Search, for example, _is_ useful. Comparing the usefulness of Bitcoin to Google Search or the smartphone is asinine. > Somehow I'm guessing most people who like bitcoin in 2011 aren't reeling from the failure of bitcoin. Of course not — they’re all extremely wealthy. That’s irrelevant to the discussion; I’m sure the author of this piece understands that Bitcoin has increased in value, but that’s not at all what the piece is about.
- anm89 5y agoHow ridiculous to suggest that there is some objective trait called useful that you have a monopoly on determining. Turns out that various people may find all of these various things either useful or not useful because it is subjective.
- philosopher1234 5y agoWhat is useful about Bitcoin? I genuinely don’t understand what use people see in it. Do you have a use? It seems to me the main use is “get rich on vetting it will go up” because I haven’t been able to find any other articulation of why i might ever want to use it.
- fastball 5y agoNobody buys drugs on the internet with Bitcoin in 2021.
- corndoge 5y agoMaybe Bitcoin doesn't, but as for the rest of the ecosystem, the gentleman author seems to have little idea of what he is taking about.
- School-Cotton 5y agoAs far as I know, no blockchain has ever proven useful for any purpose other than illegal money transfers. Do you have any counterexamples?
- sanxiyn 5y agohttps://satoshidice.com/fair https://satoshidice.com/fair
- crooked-v 5y agoAn unregulated betting platform sounds like illegal money transfers to me.
- School-Cotton 5y agoOnline casinos predate Bitcoin.
- ur-whale 5y ago> Online casinos predate Bitcoin. You missed the "provably fair" part.
- kneel 5y agoIt's incredible for long term savings.
- baq 5y agoa) in fiat terms and b) has been up till now
- ur-whale 5y ago> a) in fiat terms It's true that if your measuring stick is toilet paper, the current price of Bitcoin doesn't tell you much. > b) has been up till now Past performance is no guarantee of future ... etc Sure, that's what every traditional investment prospectus says in the first paragraph. They usually then proceed to explain how well they've been doing and why you should therefore invest. There is something called Baye's rule. Ignore it at your own (opportunity cost) risk.
- JohnJamesRambo 5y ago(2) is enough to say it completely succeeded.
- sanxiyn 5y agoI agree. I personally donated Bitcoins to WikiLeaks.
- stouset 5y agoDon’t forget (3) scams and (4) ransomware.
- XorNot 5y ago> (2) move money out of authoritarian countries To move money out of an authoritarian country, you have to know someone who wants to move money in. The only reason it works at all is because the total amount of Bitcoin doing this is comparatively very small compared to local corruption and mining which can support this use case. To make this transaction someone else in your local authoritarian country has to have Bitcoin, and be willing to exchange it for local currency. It's no huge surprise a lot of mining power ended up in China, because of course this is a transaction you do not want to do in China: you want to originate Bitcoin and then get some Americans to pay you nice clean USDs into bank accounts outside of China. Which of course works because electricity consumption in China is relatively unsuspect (or was: naturally China has cracked down on this and is having ongoing power shortages to boot). Which of course creates a weird compromise: if Bitcoin is good at getting money out of authoritarian countries, then either you're outsourcing to someone who can move currency around locally, or you are outsourcing an increasing fraction of the Bitcoin mining compute, and thus control of the network.